Recruitment agencies?

Anyone have any luck using an agency to find a job, specifically in the US? I've had a number get in contact with me after I uploaded resumes to job search sites. It'd be nice to use one to make job searching easier, but I won't bother if it's a complete waste of time.

Re: Recruitment agencies?

My sister has gone through temp agencies like 3 different times to get jobs, and they were all pretty good and she got some legit, well-paying jobs through them. She just got a HR job through one, and after a 3 month period they 'assess' her to see if they want to keep her (they almost always do, unless you're just an awful person), and then her pay goes up pretty significantly since they only pay the agency for those 3 months.

In my experience, the agencies that contact you through job sites aren't the best... I went through one last year and had an interview and everything (they even had me do a MS word/excel test...) and they literally never contacted me again after that, when they said they'd be in contact in 2-3 weeks. I was also going out job hunting on my own obviously and got 4 offers by myself. So do research on the ones that contact you. My sister went through small private ones based exclusively in the cities she was in at the time. Good luck!

Re: Recruitment agencies?

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Currently, I'm talking with the TOP group, and they seem ok. I previously tried to work with an agency but that fell through when the lady never contacted me back when I tried to schedule a Skype interview after she missed the first time we agreed to Skype and didn't bother to email me that she couldn't do it until a half an hour past our appointment time, I figured that

Re: Recruitment agencies?

I've never had any luck with recruitment agencies. I went through one that had me drive an hour and a half to their headquarters to ask banal questions that could have been easily answered over an email/phone (in fact it was clear she was just filling out a form). I did it for a pretty low level data entry job, and after we were done with her "interview" she said she'd forward my resume over to the company and they'd have 1-2 more interviews for me there.

I never heard from the company, and since then I've been getting emails for random manual labour jobs that I said flat out I wasn't interested in doing while there. Have more experience with other recruitment agencies, all negative, but far less exciting. Next worse one is where they told me they'd have a job for me next week, had me sign a paper stating what the job was about, then next week came and when I talked to them no one had any idea what I was talking about and said there was no such job.

A lot of dishonesty with those places in my experience, but there's always the chance it works out well for you.

Re: Recruitment agencies?

It's pretty hit or miss and I've found that it really depends simply on the recruiter you end up working with rather than the company.

The major ones (at least in Chicago) are Pasona, TOP, Actus, and iiicareer (used to be Interesse).

The reason I say it depends on the recruiter is that my wife and I have both worked with all these companies at some point over the years. It seems like they change staff and management quite often. Pasona was excellent when my wife worked with them but not so great when I tried to find a job with them years later. Apparently the entire management had left the branch.

I personally am not a huge fan of recruiters because in the end they care about simply filling a position rather than what is truly in the candidate's best interest. I don't blame them, they need to make their commissions. The problem is that at least in the Chicago area, there are a lot of small or mid-sized Japanese companies that exclusively use these recruiters. You are kind of stuck using them because it can open up more opportunities that aren't advertised on the internet.

I'd advise that you only go to them if you are truly sure you want to work for a Japanese company. If you get a bad feeling from a recruiter then run. You can find some good ones.